Demand-response transit is generally known, and is flexible on-demand passenger transportation that does not follow fixed routes or schedules. Such transit service is typically operated by public transit organizations and is often fully demand-responsive transport, wherein on-demand call-up door-to-door service from any origin to any destination in a service area is offered. An example of demand-response transit is paratransit, that is provided to serve people in the metropolitan area that are physically-challenged, who are provided transportation services in accordance with an insurance program of some type, etc. Typically vans or mini-buses are used to provide demand-response transit service, but share taxis and jitneys can also be used.
The scheduling of demand-response transit can be challenging. People request trips by specifying a point of departure, a destination, and a desired departure day and time. Transit providers providing demand-response transit face a fluctuating demand for trips from day to day and from hour to hour. This makes provisioning such service difficult, as it is undesirable to over-provision, which can be quite costly. Scheduling driver/vehicle runs to service the requested trips can be difficult due to the arbitrary nature of the trips requested. Further, while, in some cases, trip requests are received well in advance of the desired departure date, in other cases, they are received the day before or on the desired departure date.
Often, a pre-set demand-response transit schedule is deemed inefficient or fails for one of many reasons. This can occur, for example, when a driver encounters unexpected traffic and, as a result, will likely cause the driver to arrive at stops along a run at a time that is deemed unacceptable. When a passenger is not present at a pick-up location (i.e., a “no-show”), a driver will no longer necessarily have to visit the destination for the trip scheduled for that passenger, and, as a result, the driver will have unscheduled slack during his run. Once such schedules are set, however, manual adjustments can be made, but are cumbersome, tedious and typically result in a less-than-ideal solution.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a novel method and system for adjusting a demand-response transit schedule.